The invention relates to a device for fitting a cluster of teat cups on animals, comprising a corresponding set of bearing arms, in which each teat cup is situated at the end of its own essentially horizontal bearing arm, which bearing arms are suspended from a supporting structure, by means of which the bearing arms and the teat cups can be placed or removed from between the hind legs of the animal to be milked, and also drive means for moving each bearing arm in such a way that the corresponding teat cup can be fitted on a teat.
Such a device is known from European Patent Application EP-A-209202. In the case of this known device the bearing arms are suspended from a supporting structure which extends between the hind legs of the animal to be milked. By means of this supporting structure, the bearing arms, and thus the teat cups, are moved up and down together when the teat cups are being placed on or removed from the teats.
The disadvantages of this known device is that all four teat cups always have to be fitted or removed at the same time. If, for example, the fitting of a single teat cup goes wrong, it is not possible to repeat the fitting procedure for that one teat cup, but the whole teat cup cluster with all four teat cups, thus including those which were fitted properly, has to be removed.